Toy as Medium

The idea of the show started off as a chat, one day in early summer, with FP folks Wai and Kel during the setup of an exhibition. Wai and Kel’s model making involves intense concentration and techniques. These and the very process of construction parallel what is involved in art making, whereby passion and joy are integral to the experience.

If a medium is the very thing through which we express ourselves and deliver our ideas, a toy object fully qualifies as one. As a medium, a toy is expandable, and its meanings change over time. Toys probably began as personal diversions in the domestic setting before commodification in contemporary society, and such a history is open to interpretation. It is obvious to us, though, that toys extend themselves through multiplicity of forms to storytelling, such as in animations, books, videos (ad) and so on. A toy often suggests potential interaction with other toys or individuals. Toys are in many ways counterparts of storytelling. For example, a robot toy often incites a futuristic animation making: a singular toy-robot “lives on” with many encounters through carefully designed plots, settings and scenarios .The context of the story could be totally outside of the robot toy itself. This inventive relationship between toy objects and their narrative content manifests most brilliantly in the movie Toy Story (Pixar, 1995), in which the toy protagonist Buzzlightyear is able to acknowledge his identity as a “space ranger” fully only from the words printed on the packaging that comes with him! We are intrigued by such expandable possibilities, which is also common in art: literature often lends itself to paintings, paintings to sculptures, theatre to songs and so on. A painting we are looking at often points to a backstory that is untold, hidden, or suggested, or perhaps finding origins in a different artistic medium in another time and space. Similarly, interacting with the toy medium requires multiple levels of knowledge and imagination – for the maker as well as the player.The history and the place of toys intersect with the histories of art and culture.

In this show, “Toys as Medium,” our setup begins as another of FP’s assemblage sessions, but completes as spatial intervention. While following a specific plan of formal juxtaposition, our goal is to allow ourselves the room to rethink the possibilities of toy through actual making and playing, and to rediscover toy as an artistic medium pertaining to daily life. The versatile character of the toy objects, too, turns art into inter-subjective experiences.

A “dreamscape” from childhood is what our setup aims to recreate – it is vivid, fun and resourceful, resulting from the variety of toys and related artifacts in assemblage. This also generates an alienating reality as we build this “room” with our knowledge, resources and experience as grown-ups. The toys are the same, but we have grown out of our younger selves. This show is the return of Floating Projects’ assemblage experimenting with space and re-purposing of material objects after several FP members’ solo series. But this is more than the usual group show; this show only makes sense when we collaborate and make the space together through display strategies and the tying in of our own “toy histories.” We push boundaries, perhaps even beyond toys as medium. (2016.10.07)

On Playing 有關玩

“Play is a notoriously difficult concept to define; it is a culturally and socially specific idea.” –Mary Flanagan

“The root of creativity is found in the need to repair the good object destroyed during the depressive phase.” – Melanie Klein

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.” – Carl Jung

The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both. – Lao Tzu

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. – Friedrich Nietzsche

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. – Plato

*The show focuses on TOY with the possible play within the sets, arrangement and interactions between the time frame.

**The venue will be filled with readings, catalogues and related comics, which provide a more thoughtful dimension to the toy objects.

***Toy is a kind of common language for us as we must all have played a certain toy when small. How did toys and toy cultures form our childhood and of memory of it? TV, comics and games are also part of Toys. This show discusses and reflects on the media that come alongside with toys. How much of it has become obsolete, or elements of nostalgia in contemporary pop culture? We hope this show shares with our expat friends the toys that we grew up with for a direct gaze into our childhood.